GloryQuestor

@andrea987 Sorry if it's a bit confusing, let me explain. Whenever a game uses ADV-style visual novel text boxes and graphics, I tend to lump them under the VN genre. Examples of visual novels I've played with additional elements asides from text-based choice systems:

• Studio Crossfire's Piece of Wonder (which combines Japanese visual novel with tactical strategy sequences);
• TOP's Downhill Night BLAZE (which incorporates a driving simulation game);
• Nyx's Lightning Warrior Raidy (which has the same first-person turn-based dungeon crawler mechanics as EO, but is still considered a visual novel series in Japan and abroad);
• Type-MOON's Fate/EXTRA on the PSP (which has RPG elements and a Rock/Paper/Scissor battle system, but is still considered a visual novel).
• CROWD's Brave Soul (A visual novel with a full RPG engine)

(Don't just take my word for it--you can find these and many other similar hybrid examples on the Visual Novel Database (vndb.org).)

@Peace-Boy I'd recommend the Ace Attorney series, Etrian Odyssey series, Shin Megami Tensei series, and Etrian spin-off Persona Q: Shadow of the Labyrinth. Also Level-5's The Starship Damrey.

Reminds me a lot of Empoleon, in that it has two types that add some nice complimentary resistances. Steam Eruption sounds pretty nice for a signature move, and Scald is the perfect move for this guy.

The only issue I see is the weaknesses would be hard to overcome. Since it's a steam-based Pokemon and a pretty heavyweight grounded type, it would be a bit easy to lose it to a high-magnitude Earthquake or Thunder.

There's still plenty of life in the 3DS line, and the large library (DS & 3DS) speaks volumes for it continued longevity. I can't wait to see what new game ideas the New 3DS will bring along, and we may finally get some SNES & GBA VC emulation ... right? >_>

The simple mantra of F2P is, if the game is good, then it's worth putting money into. So far, 3 of Nintendo's efforts have gotten me to put money into them: Pokemon World Rumble, Rusty's Read Deal Baseball, and Badge Arcade.

I put quite a bit of money into unlocking all of Rumble World's balloons, and still working to get all of the Pokemon in it. After all this time it's still a fun experience I play often, although I'm not putting any more money into it unless I need it. Pokemon Shuffle, on the other hand, had no real hook to get me to pay for any expansion of the game. It was fun in it's free form, but ultimately I took it off my system in favor of Rumble World, as it's just the superior Pokemon F2P.

I ultimately spent around $30 or so to unlock everything in Rusty's. I like baseball video games, and each game has a lot of variety and challenge to make it worth spending on. It's a bit narrow in focus, but still one of the most fun game collections I still have a blast with every so often. (I was surprised that Nintendo Life did not add it to the F2P poll ... why not?)

So, my time with Badge Arcade surprised me a bit, especially in what I wanted to put money into. As a die-hard Zelda fan, I spent a fair bit initially so I could grab all of the 8-Bit Zelda collection and (almost) all of the Link Between Worlds badges before they cycled out. I also spend a couple bucks to grab my favorite Pokemon badges before the week ended, especially Diancie. Since I'm a crane-game lover, I play the practice round every day and enjoy it even now. I see myself probably sinking a few more bucks if Zelda badges pop up again.

Based on these experiences, I do like most of what Nintendo has been doing in the F2P game scene. If they stay the course on what fans are hooked on, I think it will all work out for them.

That's pretty good news! I'll probably get 'em all, since I missed out on Blue at the time — I got Red & Yellow on the days they originally came out.

Finally! It's about time Square-Enix realized how many of us were waiting for DQ7 to release here, and to also get DQ8 confirmed as well ... can't wipe the smile off this long-time DQ fan's face.

Already picked up Badge Arcade.

A really nice idea. Picked up all the pins in one of the Mario sets and in one of the Legend of Zelda sets, and was able to get one of the "Pixel" Gameboy collection pins.

I especially like how I can take my "M" and "L" folders and finally pin a Mario (for Mario-themed games) and a Link (for Zelda-themed games) on them. Can't wait to try and get some more for other game themes.

My overall opinion is good for this one. After some time with Petit Computer previously, I am liking all of the new 3DS-exclusive options (although I cannot test the Circle Pro options, as I'm still on a regular 3DS XL). 3D text and graphics, in particular, seem to work very well and are easy to implement (with Z-plane settings). Having each program project and assets in their own separate folders is also a nice feature, as Petit really got cluttered up with everything pooled into the same memory space.

If there is anything I would criticize about it, it would be the lack of the old QR code reader, as SmileBASIC is now locked into its "public key" cloud system for up- and downloading programs. I think it puts a clock on usefulness, since if and when the cloud server goes down, sharing programs online would become nearly impossible without retyping code and reproducing graphics.

Other than that, I would give this program a recommendation not just to budding programmers but also anyone who wants access to games that SmileBASIC programming wizards will eventually come up with.

Edit: So apparently, SmileBASIC does have a way to get code transferred ... the "PetitModem" program, which transfers code from your 3DS to your PC via a two-way plug-in between the 3DS headphone and the A/V Input jack on your PC soundcard. It's interesting to see analog sound data recording being used again, since this was also the same medium for saving BASIC programs on older computer to cassette tape back in the '70s and '80s. Still, I miss the QR reader part.

Having lived through pretty much every generation of home hardware, I still find that physical media has lots of value. All it takes is a company decision on old retail downloads or a hardware change to lose a digital copy forever, whereas physical media can be archived and used with the right emulator (like DOSBox) or through reproduction consoles (like the Retron-5).

On the other hand, if it is the only way for international companies to import media to other countries (like CAPCOM has been doing with Phoenix Wright), then I would be in full support of digital retail media — but really, only for this reason. If a company can do a physical release, it should.

TouchArcade gave the Chronus Arc iOS version a good ranking, so it might be work a look, otherwise this is a pretty lame 3DS list.

Still waiting for Nintendo to change its mind on GBA VC support — seriously, the original 3DS can handle it, and they proved it could handle it, so why is there still no GBA on the 3DS?!

There is some dispute that it is the "smallest" SNES game released. In my opinion, this distinction would actually belong to MegaMan vs. Bass, which was originally released in Japan as an SNES title and ported internationally as a GBA game.

We know it's always the almighty dollar, yen, etc. and the large install base factors that determine localization. If that's the case, why are they not even considering what other Japanese license companies are doing: Use a Kickstarter to generate more interest and set a bar for the base they do need to make it worth their while? I've seen quite a few successful Japanese localizations make their way through Kickstarter, but Chris Pranger seems to want to discourage risky ventures and dash fans' hopes. In a world with specialized e-services like Kickstarter, I'm still amazed that they hold on to these archaic business models and attitudes that will only serve to drive customers away.

Takeda and Miyamoto are both the most sensible, but Takeda is getting too old to rely on him more than a couple of years and Miyamoto has admitted to never being all that comfortable as a team director, so probably would be less comfortable as president.

I think it's time Nintendo pull a Sony and have NOA president Reggie Fils-Amie step in as the Nintendo Ltd. president. He's more than earned the position and would be the next most-likely known contact for Nintendo's newest business partners. If anyone else steps in, they might have to face rebuilding bridges.

As an owner of the original GBA cart of More Friends of Mineral Town, I encourage everyone to wait for that, if you don't mind being the female protagonist. There's just more to the game than in FOMT, just as with Another Wonderful Life for GC.

"...you can play it on the Wii or Wii U Virtual Consoles." Wait, no 3DS mention? :

Otherwise, this was a good review.

Very sudden, and very shocking news. RIP, Iwata-san.

Whoever his eventual successor is will have very big shoes to fill, and a very difficult mission ahead.

Like CynicalButter said, if you haven't done so yet, look up Zelda Classic for PC. It's been around for a very long time and features a lot of custom variants & game ideas.

@sketchturner FoMT is a very good version of the game, although More Friends of Mineral Town was the game I ultimately kept in my library. It improved upon the game in little ways and added a couple of new features. http://harvestmoon.wikia.com/wiki/Harvest_Moon:_More_Friends_of_Mineral_Town

It was actually pretty cool in the first couple of years--Kid Icarus vids, Dinosaur Office, and some of the 3D music videos (Blue Man Group, in particular) were nice to watch from time to time. Then too many videos just kept recycling in rather than sporting all-new content, and the new content was pretty lean and didn't entirely gel.

RIP, Nintendo Video. You won't be missed, but you were fun while it lasted.

The minute I saw what Splatoon was all about, I thought a Squid Girl crossover would be inevitable.

Well, this and a Pokemon crossover — I'm pretty sure there will be some Tentacool/Tentacruel and Inkay DLC somewhere here.

As a big fan of Yoshifumi Hashimoto's works, Lord of Magna looks like something I want to get eventually.

Everything else 3DS/DSi seems okay, just not my cup of tea.

It's a bit sad that there is only 1 3DS extra, and one that most (including myself) already have.

I still like the overall mix the indies offered up. Hopefully, they do continue this and eventually make it international — a global effort would only give more donation opportunity to charities!

I'm still hoping that they release the original DQ trilogy on 3DS at some point to test the international waters again. Then we can all buy the heck out of it and prove to Squeenix that DQ VII & VIII needs to be released over here, even if it's eShop exclusive.

It's too bad we never did get to see the multi-robot series internationally, although Endless Frontier was a lot of fun to play through. With the Project X-Zone series making waves (and using the SRW gameplay engine), and with notable changes in the licensing landscape since the last SRW release, here's hoping that we might finally see it get out of Japan.

The only issue here is that SE doesn't want to take the CAPCOM route and make it eShop exclusive. That would save them a lot of money in physical cart production and get the games out to the people that want them.

I still wonder why they never considered this, even for the older game remakes now on Android and iOS...

It's a pretty sad end for a company that's had some success along the way. Coincidentally, someone recommended I watch the anime version of Sands of Destruction, saying it was a very good adaptation of a great game. It's on Hulu, in case anyone else in NA wants to check it out: http://www.hulu.com/sands-of-destruction

Definitely a unique game developer that will be missed.

"Now, for the first time, those stories and characters will be brought to life in entirely new ways – only at Universal theme parks."

Well... not for the first time. Universal and Nintendo partnered up when they did The Wizard, since the reveal of Super Mario 3 & Video Armageddon took place at Universal Studios Hollywood. So, I'm fully expecting to see Video Armageddon recreated to celebrate the event ... maybe.

It's sad news what's happening, since they are the force behind some of the Japanese games I really like (the Fate/EXTRA series in particular). I hope that they didn't get forcibly dissolved and folded.

It's worth playing, I guess. The Creative mode provides a nice free-form creation system with only minor annoyances (specifically, I'll be erasing when I want to place, or place where I want to erase). The Survival Mode is a heck of a challenge — even with the ease of making Gold & Diamond Swords, I have yet to immediately find how to craft Armor, so I ended up being fair game to the monster crowd quite easily.

If there is only one thing to fault, it's the fact that the crafting system only visually shows you what you need in order to craft — the actual names and descriptions are not available, so you have to guess based on the resulting item names and material shapes how to make things. Not game-breaking, but it would make some crafting tasks a lot easier. >_<

X and Zero returning? Kite AND Haseo together?!

Where do I sign up? XD

Big fan of the first game, and also the Super Robot Wars games (on which Project X Zone was largely based). If there is a sequel, and if the character base is good, then it's an insta-buy for me!

I've been waiting for a long time to see it get over to NA, so can't wait to finally play it.

Excave II will be my eventual buy. I liked the first one for what it is, and from what I've read, the second game improves upon the original in a lot of ways.

Ugh. I have all but one of the 3DS-capable games on the Gold list, so it looks like I'll be getting Super Mario Bros. Deluxe. Yay. --;

... that's, of course, if I can even get into Club Nintendo.

The article was a little Battleship-hate, which I do not understand. I still like playing Battleship now and again, and this game would be fine if it were not so overpriced.

@ikki5 Not to the level that Baltimore Knife & Sword does. Most prop houses create beautiful replicas that have no thickness or edge to them, but all of the items featured on "Man-At-Arms" are fully-functional and combat-ready: All of the swords they make are sharp-edged and the shields use the right kind of material & thickness to withstand blows.

I really like the sword variant they did. Since their main source for the shorter Master Sword was ALTTP, it makes some sense, considering the Link wielding it is usually still a preteen and the final tempered form of the sword in that game is a red/golden sword (which I haven't seen done before).

@PlywoodStick It's a good quote because it encompasses the spirit of Nintendo as it was way back when, and still to this day. How has Nintendo survived so long in both good and bad times? Because they are Nintendo.

Think about it: Do you see that many people discuss the legacy of the PS3 or Xbox 360? Not as much — as consoles, they really just came and went, out with the old, on with the new. But the NES, Gameboy, SNES, GameCube, N64, and even Game & Watch all pop up again and again, all the time. That's a legacy that no company has ever matched, and no other company seems to be anytime soon.

Nintendo has always cemented itself into the entertainment consciousness from generation to generation, and this new deal is the next step in regaining the mass market into the Nintendo fold. This isn't so much a new direction as it is a return to their roots as an entertainment company first, and every Nintendo fan should be happy about that. I can't wait to see what comes of QoL and the new, more connected fanbase.

"I don't think the other companies understand that they do not have what Nintendo has. It is why we will grow. Maybe the growth will not always be as fast as it has been, but it will continue." - Minoru Arakawa, NOA founder (from "Game Over" by David Sheff, 1st Ed.)

Still relevant today as it was when Arakawa said it over 20 years ago.

I definitely want to get my hands on Fossil Fighters: Frontier at some point, as I'm still making my way through the first two games and like them a lot. Can't buy it myself right now, though it's an easy recommendation for Pokemon and other monster arena fans looking for something a little different.

@edcomics Similar projects did work that way, though. The best example is the .hack franchise.

The .hack story begins with .hack//SIGN anime, the prequel of the main .hack saga on Playstation 2 (which included the interquel anime .hack//LIMINALITY), then goes into a manga (.hack//Legend of the Twilight). There were also some light novel "filler" that retold the PS2 games' story from another perspective (.hack//Another Birth) and a prequel to the story itself (.hack//AI Buster).

The reason why the original .hack worked lies in having a very strong foundation story to build upon and the right fan base to plug into the experience. It's hard to replicate such experiences, as these companies are finding out, and BANDAI did later when the .hack "Conglomerate" tried to replicate the experience with G.U. (to rather mixed results overall).

On topic, this was sadly inevitable considering the exploit could cost Nintendo quite a bit in revenue. I also wanted to start seeing region-free gaming officially supported, so it's too bad Nintendo couldn't leave that particular part alone, or find a workaround. In this instance, they eventually need to wake up and listen to what their consumer base in the 21st century want from them.

Off topic a bit, those who said that re-releasing old Pokemon is missing two unique points: Pokemon Yellow and Pokemon Crystal. Even if you can't trade Pokemon, both of these games (being "third games") had a lot of additional storylines, good mixes of Pokemon to catch, and special features that made them great standalone releases. If there are any old Pokemon Nintendo should put on VC, it's these two.

@Captain_Gonru It was released in Japan, on February 7th, 2013. The problem here is they announced their preference for re-releasing DQ on mobile (read: iOS & Android) platforms a year later, which is why there has been no news on any DQ 3DS releases, not even the NES versions. With Bravely and Theatrhythm doing well internationally, they might be changing their minds, but so far there's been no word. Even if they do eventually release it internationally, it'll probably end up on phones first.

@SuperCharlie78 Unfortunately, I doubt DQ7 will be anywhere near a 3DS, since all of the DQ re-releases were on iOS and Android. Squeenix's Yuu Minake: "We've always wanted to have [Dragon Quest] available on the most popular console or gaming machine available at the time. If you look at the modern gaming scape, a lot of people play games on the mobile platform. That's why we felt Dragon Quest would be appropriate to bring to that very popular game device, [mobile]." (quote from http://www.polygon.com/2014/8/29/6084377/dragon-quest-re-releases-mobile-square-enix )

I'm really just as sad about this mindset they are in. I would love to see these versions of DQ 1 - 3 put on 3DS eShop format someday, and with TR FF (and soon DQ) looking to make waves, it could be possible they may change their minds. Only time will tell.

@cbkummer There's quite a lot of item drops. The challenge becomes how much you take in to the dungeon every cycle and what to prioritize, because your inventory space is pretty limited.

As for the items themselves, they do give you a lot of flexibility how you want to do combat. For weapons I really like the dual blades (hits multiple enemies in a group) and bows (as noted above, I like the penetration aspect). The swords and rapiers are pretty good for more close target precision — it's all about what weapon you would prefer. There are also various magic books to collect, so if you want to focus on magic it gives you that option. I also started finding special messages and map pieces, but so far haven't gotten far enough in to see what these lead to. You also get accessories that you can add more than one of to focus on a particular aspect — greater attack, greater speed, etc.

After playing the game for a few hours, I found it to be a simple yet fun dungeon grinder. You choose which of the two main characters you want to be, outfit them appropriately, dive into the dungeon, defeat monsters & collect items (including special keys to unlock more of the dungeon), exit, repeat.

For an on-the-go game, this is actually a nice way to do your dungeon delving in short bursts. I like the tight controls of this one — wielding a bow proved easy to aim and it was not jumpy or sensitive at all, while the melee weaponry is varied and being able to switch on the shield no matter the weapon works seamlessly.

If you are looking for a deep story or RPG elements, so far I have not seen much of that. The intro is about all I have seen for any sense of story, and there is no experience or leveling other than equipping stronger-starred weapons, armors, and boost items. There are boss creatures, and the first one you encounter is deceptively simple but could be a problem for the unprepared, but it leaves you wondering how far the experience can be held before boredom of repetition sets in.

Melee weapons also tend to break when you use them too much, which is annoying since you have to quickly swap out the weapon for another via dragging with the stylus or your finger. This is also why I feel the bow class is the best weapon in this game, as it never needed repair whenever I have used it and the arrows penetrate through creatures.

Overall, this is a good game of the quick adventure type — despite the melee annoyances and being really short on story, it is still an engaging game that is meant for short burst, on-the-go adventuring gaming with some progression as you play. It all depends on how much you enjoy grinding and item-leveling as to if this will keep your attention.

Love the old-school look to it, and I'm a fan of other hybrid Shop/RPG games (like Recettear), so I will probably get this one.

Here we go again — the usual "sever get slammed, site glitches, puts up fake maintenance messages when it's actually because everyone's trying to access all at once".

-Sigh- I guess I'll keep trying until it finally happens.

If you want the full story on the entire Tetris deal (which involved not just Nintendo but also Atari Games and Mirrorsoft / Spectrum Holobyte), you should read the book "Game Over" by David Sheff. It's a must-read book for any Nintendo fan: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Game_Over_%28book%29